Hermès Teams Up With Hodinkee For Slim d’Hermès Limited Editions

Hermès is the latest brand to partner with the watch enthusiast site Hodinkee to create two limited edition Slim d'Hermès watches, a time-only model and a GMT, in a special shade of “Hodinkee blue.”

“Hermès really is the great bastion of quality and refinement in luxury—for watches, jewelry, silk, and leather—everything they do,” says Hodinkee founder and CEO Ben Clymer. “This is a dream collaboration for us and one that extends our brand outside of the world of watches.”

Clymer and Hermès creative director Pierre-Alexis Dumas met about three years ago, following an article the site published on Hermès and masculine objects, such as barometers, clocks, and cameras. They stayed in touch and eventually their conversations turned to collaboration.

The Hodinkee editions mark the first time Hermès has partnered with another company on a mechanical watch. It has previously worked with Apple on an Hermès Apple Watch and with Jaeger-LeCoultre for a special edition Atmos clock.

For Clymer, the classically round Slim d’Hermès was a no-brainer: “It spoke perfectly to our audience,” he says.

The elegant Slim d’Hermès debuted in 2015 with a distinctive dial appointed with stylized numerals in a custom, airy font designed by Philippe Apeloig, a French graphic designer and typographer.

This year, the brand launched the Slim GMT with a quirky second time zone display at 10 o’clock. While the numbers appear to be scattered haphazardly on the GMT sub-dial, they are actually arranged in order, so the hand correctly progresses. Apertures serve as day/night indicators for local and home times, and there is a date sub-dial at 6 o’clock.

While the slate gray dial appears to have a smoked—or fumé—effect with darker shading around the perimeter, it’s actually the crystal that is shaded to impart a vignette look.

To give the limited editions an exclusive Hodinkee twist, they selected a special shade of blue. “We wanted to do something really beautiful and lasting,” Clymer says. “This blue is incredibly rich, and it really spoke to both of us.” Both the time-only and GMT will feature the smoky crystal and are fitted with matching blue alligator straps.

Hermès made 100 Slim d'Hermès for Hodinkee stainless steel time-only watches (US$7,650) and 24 palladium GMTs (US$14,700), in a nod to the brand’s Paris address, 24 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Each 39.5-mm case is engraved on the exhibition back with the number and designation, “Edition Hodinkee.”

The watches are exclusively available at Hodinkee’s online store launching Thursday morning. And, given the speedy sell-throughs on previous Hodinkee editions, they’re expected to go fast.

The Slim GMT has a quirky second time zone display at 10 o'clock. Hodinkee

In September, Hodinkee marked its decade milestone with the Omega Speedmaster Hodinkee 10th Anniversary limited edition, based on the popular Speedmaster CK2998 reference and an homage to the Omega Speedmaster MK40 that Clymer’s grandfather passed on to him as a teenager, sparking his interest in watches. Within minutes, all 500 pieces, priced at US$6,500, were gone.

“Our audience is a very small percentage of the watch-buying community, but it’s a very influential one,” Clymer says. “These limited editions allow brands to say to the enthusiast, ‘Hey, we really care about you.’ For us, it allows us to work with brands we really admire and extend what the Hodinkee brand is.”

The first one-off collection was the MB&F LM101 Limited Edition for Hodinkee in stainless steel in 2015. To date, Hodinkee has partnered on 13 special editions with brands, including Nomos, Ressence, TAG Heuer, Laurent Ferrier, Swatch, Seiko, Omega, Grönefeld, and others. The Hermès Slim is the fifth limited edition this year.

The Hodinkee editions are the first time Hermes has partnered with another company on a mechanical watch. Hodinkee

"We think the products we do in collaboration with these brands are exactly what our audience wants, even more than the standard products,” Clymer says.

One example is last year’s Vacheron Constantin Historiques Cornes de Vache 1955 Limited Edition for Hodinkee, a watch that referenced a vintage chronograph, but in durable, more affordable stainless steel. All 36 of the US$45,000 watches sold in just 30 minutes.

Another venture with Zenith channeled the spirit of the brand’s watches from the 1950s, rather than the ’60s and ’70s, which the brand typically references. “We try to look at brands and see what we love about them and try to focus on that,” Clymer says.

Working with luxury titan Hermès, however, was not the usual collaboration. “The others were with watch brands that we know so intimately,” Clymer explains, pointing out that Hermès is a huge, multibillion-dollar company that’s not just focused on watches, but has myriad luxury goods. “This was a much longer, slower process and more attention was paid to detail in a way that, frankly, we had never experienced before. This is a dream collaboration, for sure.”

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